USS Grandeur - One... More... Time!

^^ Aside from an Arch & Design material with glossy refraction, there's only one other method I know of for creating a diffusion effect that looks half way decent. You can apply a falloff opacity effect to the objects behind the bussard lens which makes their edges appear fuzzy. That's the method I used on my old Vanguard model and my original TOS Enterprise model. It only works well with certain shapes, however, mainly spheres, where the surface is guaranteed to curve away from you no matter what the viewing angle. It also fails to cast realistic shadows from the sun or whatever the light source happens to be (when, for example, the nacelle casts a shadow onto the secondary hull or interconnecting dorsal).

Something different: Would it be possible to make a small render with the warp glow of the nacelles disabled?

I'm very interested in how the cyan collector looks without the blue warp grille behind it; perhaps that would make things 'pop' again, as some have said. I have a suspicious feeling that the curves you've added around the grills are visually interesting enough, but I don't know for sure.

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I think the bussard color has been decided and we're sticking with red. Besides which, I have no intention of leaving the warp grills dark.

Well, NP... I'll play with it a little, maybe add one of my cool space scenes, and make it so it's at different sizes. Come to think of it, I might add a slight glow to the cannons so it looks more ominous

We'll play by the rules, Jason. I know you've said that you don't really like anyone using the unfinished ship inworks pics you post before and I respect that. loanwriter won't use this one for the Tech-manual unless I give the okay.

If you're talking about the aux deflector, there's a reason it's called "auxiliary." I'm thinking it only lights up at high warp or when the saucer separates. Your mileage may vary, however.

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I'm with you 100% on this point. Lighting things up just to have "neon lights" is silly.

If it's in operation, light it up. If not, leave it dark. (And, if you can... another preference from my personal pref category... I'd love it if you did the TMP-type glow, where it "warms up" from grey to dull-orange to yellow, to white, to blue when at max power. Your call obviously, just casting my 2cent vote!)

It's one of the things I really like in the new movie: Before, we regularly saw the impulse engines lit when at warp. In the movie, you specifically see the impulse engines go completely dark before the warp engine kicks in; much more consistent with the warp theories.

We'll play by the rules, Jason. I know you've said that you don't really like anyone using the unfinished ship inworks pics you post before and I respect that. loanwriter won't use this one for the Tech-manual unless I give the okay.

It's one of the things I really like in the new movie: Before, we regularly saw the impulse engines lit when at warp. In the movie, you specifically see the impulse engines go completely dark before the warp engine kicks in; much more consistent with the warp theories.